My Attempts To Be A Teacher - Not My Best Thing Really

This posting will be an account of my experiences as a supply teacher! I know, its unbelievable, but it has happened!

While we were working at Luanda International School, it was understood that in need, I could be used as a supply teacher.   Something that I had hoped would never occur, as I have never wanted to be a teacher, and looked upon the whole concept with considerable angst and fear.


However, one day the worst happened.  I was walking through the school office whistling a happy tune, and I was grabbed by the principal as I passed,  and told abruptly that I would be put into a class of kids for the first week of the next term as the normal class teacher was getting married and would thus return to school 5 days after the start of term.


There I was....Caught! I gulped and kneeling on the floor, begged to be spared this torment... but to no avail, she was adamant... and thus it was done.... I had been promoted to the ranks of my fellow Luanda colonists.


After having been told that I would be teaching, I managed to find time in the last weeks of that term to spend a bit of time in the classroom I would be looking after, which if anything simply increased my apprehension, even though the kids couldn't have been kinder to me.

This is the classroom I worked in, with a few real meat kids to give scale - If nothing much else...

When I arrived in the classroom at the beginning of the term, Richard, the fellow whose class I was to look after had been kind enough to leave me a load of notes telling me what to do, and another colleague who teaches the same age group (the class is split into two groups) met with me the day before term began to also tell me what to do. So, well armed with a mass of photocopied tasks and a head full of "you could try doing this" stuff, I waited in the class room on the first morning, full of trepidation, for the kids to arrive.

Which they duly did, to my disappointment, as I had been hoping for an earthquake or something to make the whole exercise unnecessary.

As it was a short week, starting on Wednesday, not all the kids had returned from their Christmas break, so I only had 10 kids - which felt more than enough for me!
At Luanda International School, they don't teach with the kids at desks in rows, but rather with a number of tables scattered around the room, at which the kids sit, so there is no focus in the room, which meant that I had to sort of wander around like a lost sheep, attempting to keep things moving as they should.


The normal morning routine was that one of the kids took the register, while the others started on a series of maths games, working individually and (supposedly) in silence. To my amazement this went very well, they all knew the routine and simply got on with it. Made me feel more than a little redundant, but it was a relief!


The only problem then was that having completed the maths tests, I had to see if they had managed to answer the questions correctly... which entailed asking them to tell me the answer to each question ("hands up who knows the answer to number.........") Which I then had to write on the board. Two problems here... Firstly, I had to work out quickly in my head what the correct answers were.... What the hell is the "denominator?" and then, almost worse, write this on the board. Now, the teachers among you will find this normal and unremarkable, but my handwriting is lousy at the best of times, and writing on a board is a skill... Which I most decidedly do not have. I did my best to appear cool, calm and collected as I scrawled on the board, my writing getting bigger and smaller, line descending and mounting.... and then having to make the letters and numbers increasingly small to fit on the board. Oh misery!


We all survived this experience, and the kids seemed happy enough with my efforts (the policy in this school was to call teachers by their last name, preceded by Mr or Miss or Mrs, so I had to be addressed as Mr Cole...which the kids instantly changed to Mr Cool, rather to my pleasure)


We then moved on to "Language", which involved the kids coming up with a lot of words to describe irritation, and having made these lists, write a short story using as many of these words as they could. On the face of it, a simple thing to do.. But a number of these kids hardly spoke English, so that was tricky too. But we all persevered, and most kids managed, with the help of dictionaries and a certain input from me to find a respectable number of words meaning irritation.


So then on to writing the story with these words. My first serious problem. Most of them calmly got on with it and scribbled away happily enough, but two kids simply sat there and gazed at me. After a while I registered that these two hadn't even started, so I went to one of them, an American kid and asked him why he wasn't writing..to which he responded, looking me firmly in the eye that this was not Language, that it was vocabulary, and he saw no point in the entire exercise.


Hummmmm... Over to quiet, friendly explaining mode, I thought to myself, and began to explain to him that language was in fact made up of, among other things, vocabulary. He gazed at me as I went on about this, and when I had finished what I felt had been a masterly exposition of the benefit and point of having a good vocabulary, he simply gazed at me, and didn't move. I suggested, quietly, that perhaps I would be a good plan for him to get his head down and do some work, to which, to my well concealed fury, he merely reiterated his point that it wasn't language.


Hmmmm..... So, dumping all educational theories, I simply told him to get on with it or I would tear his legs off at the hip and beat him to death with them. I hasten to add that I said this with a friendly grin. To my surprise, this did the trick and he put his head down and got on with it. Ah what it is to be an educational pioneer, eh?


By this time, the second kid had started to work, so I regrouped and started to think what I would do with them as the following task.


Happily, at this point it was morning break, so they all dashed off and I sat down and wondered what I had let myself in for.


To my vast relief the rest of the morning was taken up by them going off to other, specialist teachers (Portuguese, computers and music) so I had the rest of the morning to prepare myself for the afternoon..and to rapidly seek advice from my other colleague.


The afternoon was also Language, but a different approach. Firstly I had to read to them for about 20 minutes (these kids are about 10, by the way) from an adventure book that they had been working with for a while during the last term. Having read to them, we then discussed what I had read, and this went very well.... They had listened well, and were obviously engaged by the story, and had a number of points to make about the section I had read to them... bliss... 45 minutes passed in a useful and pleasant fashion. After this, it was my honour and duty to introduce them to a New Concept In Language.... 


The Cliff Hanger.


To do this I had a whole set of photocopied material, consisting of an example of a cliff hanger, plus a number of "cliff hanging" ending sentences, and an explanation of what a cliff hanger was. All good stuff, and simple too. So we had fun with this concept for the better part of the afternoon, with the kids producing a lot of stories which tended to end with the word... "and suddenly...." But they had got the point, and even began to see that there were better ways of doing it than ending with that word. So I felt reasonably happy with my first days work.


I duly sent them off home, with their homework assignments, and then collapsed in a handy heap.

Teaching is bloody hard work!

I knew this anyway, but to actually do it myself, really brought it home to me.
Anyhow, the following days followed much the same pattern, most kids worked hard and cheerfully, several didn't, one was immovable, and hardly did any work at all and all of them were good fun to be with.


I got to be able to write almost legibly on the board, and to be able to solve simple maths questions in my head...and to my amazement, mostly kept my cool with the kids who were tricky in one way or another. And best of all, I found I could keep them quiet without shouting.


It was an interesting experience, quite different to the sort of work I used to do with kids, both as a Youth Worker in England years ago, and more recently with The Meeting Point in France. But, I am totally convinced that it is not work I am cut out for... Not my thing at all. Glad to have done it, in fact... but I hope never to do it again.

So there you have it, a brief description of my equally brief period as a class teacher.